Collected Essays
These essays trace the long unraveling that led to the Fracture — and the ideas, ambitions, and betrayals that shaped what rose in its place. They are not histories of certainty, but studies in consequence: what happens when compromise becomes a creed, and when the record of failure is mistaken for peace.
Together, they chart the transformation of a nation into six sovereignties, and the survival of the people who refused to disappear between them.
Essays
ON EMPIRE BEFORE THE FRACTURE
The Fracture begins with the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877–78 — but its
roots reach far deeper. This essay traces how the old United States was already
bound to global empires through slavery, land theft, and foreign capital long
before it split. By the time federal troops withdrew and the country abandoned its
last chance at multiracial democracy, the breaking had already begun. What
followed was not sudden; it was inevitable.
TIMELINE: EMPIRE AND COLLAPSE, 1619-1905
A chronological record tracing how foreign capital, forced labor, and continental ambition shaped the United States long before the Fracture. From the first ships in 1619 to the rise of the Six Sovereignties, this archive reveals how the breaking unfolded in plain sight—slowly, predictably, and without surprise to anyone who was paying attention.
On Reconstruction: The Promise Before the Fall
When the federal government withdrew its last troops from the South in 1877, it called the act a compromise. History calls it surrender. The abandonment of Reconstruction traded the presidency for millions of lives and set the continent on its path toward the Fracture.
The Shape of the Break
What happens when a country built on contradiction finally meets its breaking point? This essay traces the collapse of the old Union into six sovereignties — the Northern Coalition, the Confederate Southern Territories, the Western Alliance, Cascadia, the Pacific Freehold, and the Commonwealth of New Alaska — and the ideologies that tore them apart.
The Great Exodus
As slavery reasserted itself across the Confederacy, freedom moved underground again. The Second Exodus follows the rebirth of the Underground Railroad — now a vast network of safehouses, air routes, and mountain crossings that carried survivors north and west toward New Alaska, Cascadia, and the Pacific Freehold.
The Age of Repair: The Lower Five
After the Fracture, law did not disappear; it merely forgot its oath. The Lower Five sovereignties — fractured, fevered, and desperate to survive — began rebuilding their worlds from the ruins of empire. Some turned inward, some predatory. All learned what it costs to live without mercy.
The Age of Repair: The Commonwealth
In the far north, another kind of rebuilding began — slower, quieter, rooted in care. The Commonwealth of New Alaska emerged from the conviction that freedom must be lived, not declared. Its first decades were called the Age of Repair: a revolution by mending.
A History of the Fracture 